The Historical Background

The names of Plato and Aristotle have together accompanied the winding course of European philosophy from the beginning. It is true that Aristotle was regarded during the High Middle Ages simply as ‘the philosopher’, but the period between Saint Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa also saw the survival of a Platonic tradition that attempted to interpret the relationship between the soul and transcendent reality in a Christian fashion. The Florentine Renaissance celebrated the revival of a theology that, enlivened with the spirit of neo-Platonism, undertook to integrate Plato's treatment of love and beauty into a single doctrine. And a century later, the circle associated with Jacobus Zarabella was striving to renew the Aristotelian interest in the philosophy of nature.

Modern scientific thought in general, however, soon began to turn against the verbal subtleties of Scholastic philosophy in favour of an increasingly empirical method of approach. Francis Bacon, the principal protagonist in this, expressly endeavoured in his Novum Organon to break with the conceptual hold of Aristotelianism, although he simultaneously appealed to the traditional rhetorical status of epagogē to secure the principle of induction so fundamental to empirical science. To some extent, the Cambridge Platonists grouped around Whichcote and Cudworth subsequently represented a reaction against empiricism, returning to the explicitly theological orientation of the Renaissance and attempting to defend the claims of faith by appealing to Plato.